In recent years wet-shaving, so-called “safety razors” having a cartridge with various numbers of blades and a guard have been proposed in the patent literature and commercialized, as described e.g., in U.S. Pat. No. 5,787,586, which generally describes a type of design that has been commercialized as the three-bladed Mach III razor, and in U.S. Pat. No. 7,197,825, which generally describes a type of design that has been commercialized as the five-bladed Fusion razor, both by The Gillette Company. The guard is located forward of the blades and is used to stretch the skin and prepare hairs for shaving.
Some razors have guards with larger contact areas to increase skin stretching and hair preparation by providing greater numbers of skin stretching elements, such as surfaces, fins, ribs, fingers, or the like. But shave prep and/or shave debris may accumulate between the guard and the skin during one or more shaving strokes. Under one hypothesis, the accumulation restricts the guard from frictionally engaging the skin (i.e., drag) and may tend to lessen skin stretch to during each stroke. Skin stretching tends lead to better closeness buy forcing hairs to protrude farther from their follicles. Under another hypothesis. the accumulation may cause so-called “hydroplaning” of the cartridge, which is a lifting the cartridge blades away from the skin by the shave prep in between the guard and the skin, thereby potentially reducing the closeness of the shave. Guards with larger contact areas may experience more hydroplaning.